5.11.08 Letting The Truth Free & Empower Us
WESTMINSTER PULPIT
The Rev. Dr. David Thompson
May 11, 2008 “Letting The Truth Free & Empower Us”
This Sunday is the feast of Pentecost. It is also Mother’s Day. Someone said to me, “How are you going to link those themes in a sermon?”
Well the Holy Ghost is all about power from above. Also the word for spirit in Hebrew in the Old Testament is “ruach” which is in the feminine gender. So what does this have to do with Mother’s Day? Since the Holy Spirit of God is in the female gender and therefore mother of all, then it could be argued that Mother’s Day and Pentecost are all about women’s empowerment. But also, since we are all created in the image of God male and female then it is also true to say that Pentecost is about the empowerment of men as well.
But what I want to focus on today in the Spirit of God is not our sexuality as male and female but something that is promised to us in the gift of the Holy Spirit. The gift of the Holy Spirit is to lead us into all truth with the understanding that the truth always sets us free.
David, who was probably considered to be Israel’s greatest king, had a number of tragic flaws. One of them was that he did not like to hear bad news. You took a considerable risk being a messenger who bore bad news. David had already killed three messengers of bad news when we come across Joab having a conversation with Ahimaaz. When Ahimaaz wanted to bring David up to date with good news, Joab warned him that David will not reward him for the news that Absalom is dead.
So Joab asks a Cushite to run and tell David the news, and he gives no warning to the Cushite. Joab obviously feels that the Cushite, an Ethiopian, is expendable.
But Ahimaaz pleads to be able to run and Joab gives in but again with a warning.
Ahimaaz runs faster, gets to the king but tells him no bad news. When the Cushite gets there he spills the beans and the king shudders.
I want to ask us all today, how do we react to the truth we do not want to hear? The truth could be about our personality, our affect on others, our management style, our leadership style, our marital relationship, our relationships with others, our professional conduct, in short any aspect of our lives. Do we shoot the messenger?
Sadam Hussein was the kind of person that if he was told something that he did not want to hear, he would take the person into another room and literally shoot them. Saddam was advised by his generals not to fight the United States. He didn’t listen.
Napoleon, a brilliant general, would listen to no advice about invading Russia.
Russia pulled out its time tested strategy of burning its towns and cities ahead of the enemy advance, so that there were no supplies for the vast army of Napoleon. And one day the great French army witnessed their grim white lipped commander driving past them all in a stage coach back to France—his great army in disarray.
Hitler, learning nothing from Napoleon, also took on Russia, a mistake that cost him the war. One never spoke back to Hitler.
Scott Peck once wrote: “Virtually all the evil in this world is committed by people who are absolutely certain they know what they are doing.”
Today is the day when we celebrate the coming of the gift of the Holy Spirit. One of the major functions of the Holy Spirit is to lead us all into the truth. As Jesus said, “The truth shall set you free.” What is the relationship then to the truth and shooting the messenger?
When Stephen was martyred in the New Testament he preached a sermon that got him killed. In that sermon he said that when God sent his prophets to Israel that they always resisted the Holy Spirit. He said, “Can you name a single prophet who spoke out to you that your ancestors never persecuted?” Stephen equated shooting the messenger with resisting the Holy Spirit. Why? Because there is a relationship between truth and the Holy Spirit. Quite simply, to resist the truth is to resist the Holy Spirit of God.
Why do we human beings do this? The most basic reason I can come up with is our insecurity. Sometimes our insecurities are covered over with a bully personality and a massive ego.
But a truly secure person can handle the truth, they thrive on it, make course corrections based on the truth and become better parents, spouses and leaders.
Insecure people, who shoot the messengers who could help them the most, all make some basic mistakes. What are they?
1) They take everything personally. One of the least effective Presidents of the United States according to a biographer was Andrew Johnson. Michael Benedict says in his book The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson: “Having taken a position on any issue, Johnson interpreted every attack on that position as an attack on himself.” There was therefore no way for this President to learn he could make no mistakes or accept any criticism.
Secure people, however, are open to new ideas and will discuss the truth or lack of truth found in the message. They will always debate the issue on the merits. Even if the truth is hard to bear, secure people will welcome it, because they have learned that it is better to welcome the truth rather than suppress it.
2) Secondly the insecure person does not really believe that the truth will set them free.
In the Old Testament lesson today King David has a fixed idea: No matter what Absalom does he is to remain the apple of David’s eye. Even when Absalom leads an insurrection against his father which if it had been successful would have resulted in David’s death, David still persists with his idea that Absalom is wonderful.
Joab finally stands up to David and gives him the truth. He says: “Today you are covering the faces of all your servants with shame when they saved your life today, and the lives of your sons and daughters, and of your wives too, and your concubines, all because you love those who hate you, and hate those who love you. Today you have made it plain that commanders and soldiers mean nothing o you since now I see that if Absalom were alive today, and we all dead, you would be pleased. Now get up, come out and reassure your soldiers for if you do not come, I swear by Yahweh not one man will stay with you tonight; and this will be a worse misfortune for you than all that has happened to you from your youth until now.
David gets up and reassures his troops. Something is so irrefutably true in Joab’s words that David listens. Joab penetrates through David’s obsession with an appeal to self interest. And David is wise enough to listen. In a similar instance when David committed murder in order to steal another man’s wife, and was faced with that truth by Nathan the prophet he admitted he was wrong and said in the words of the responsive psalm we read together today:
God create in me a clean heart
Put into me a new and constant spirit
Do not banish me from Your presence
Do not deprive me of your Holy spirit
David understands that despite his flaws that truth and the Holy Spirit are linked. His greatness as a leader is to embrace the truth and make course corrections which are vital to good leadership.
1) Thirdly insecure people don’t understand the relationship between truth, The Holy Spirit and love. The Christian mantra is to speak the truth in love. When we speak up we do so for a reason—it is the most loving thing to do all things considered. Christians are to speak up because we care.
Some people when they criticize do not do so out of love but because they seek power sometimes at any price. Like wolves around a deer they wait their opportunity. What they say might well be true but there is no love in it.
Our Christian faith is about transformation of character. We are to be new creatures in Christ in a day by day process of transformation. No longer are we to be insecure and unable to face the truth. When we ask Christ to live in our hearts, he does so by the power of the Holy Spirit. That means that the inner voice of loving truth begins to speak within us, leading us eventually into all truth. This is a process that begins here on earth and continues into the next life. Nobody gets there in this life. What we are left with however is not failure but an energizing Process.
Scott Peck says in his book Further Along The Road Less Travelled: “The path to Holiness lies in questioning everything. Seek and you shall find enough pieces of truth to be able to start fitting them together. You will never be able to complete the puzzle. But you will be able to fit together enough pieces to get glimpses of the big picture and to see that it is very beautiful indeed.”
So, it’s Mother’s Day and someone criticizes you, what do you do as a mother?
People are supposed to be extra nice on this day, but you get criticized! That is hard to bear. What do you do?
1) Don’t shoot the messenger! Decide instead to see if there is any truth in what the person says. Let’s note this: If we have a strong reaction to what the person says, watch out! There may be more truth in what the person is saying than we may wish to handle. They may have the information we most need to make a course correction. If we make a habit of not listening we will surround ourselves with sycophants… not good!
2) Remember when we resist what is true we are resisting God’s Spirit! Know that God has had a lot of trouble with us human beings over the millennia resisting the truth. But spiritual growth only comes to those who are undefended and open, even to the truth they do not wish to hear. They know this secret: However painful the truth is, it always sets us free!
3) When you decide to speak up and be the messenger here are some rules that I received from a respected college professor:
· Do your homework first
· Expect feedback
· If you are wrong admit it
· If you are not stick to your guns
· Remember that entrenched power always fights back
Remember that St. Paul used to be a part of the establishment. In fact he consented to the death of Stephen the martyr. But one day the Holy Spirit got through to Paul and he became a saint, opposing what he saw before as the only truth. His reversal was total.
St. Paul writing about his change of heart said this: Love keeps no score of wrongs.
Love does not take offence but delights itself only in the truth.
Do we want to become that kind of a person, mother, father, parent, leader, follower or worker? That is what Pentecost is about. It is about becoming the kind of person whose defense is love, and in whose heart is a love of the truth.
Let me say something that I think is truthful but that was buried in patriarchy. The Old Testament truth of the ‘Ruah’ Spirit as female soon got lost in the masculine. But I think that the Old Testament had it right when the Spirit of God was considered feminine. That is the truth of the Genesis passage that we are all made in the image of God, male and female. God is male and female and we are in that image even if we are men or women. We all have our male and female sides and this is a mystery that goes beyond our sexuality, but also goes to the ground of our being and to the ground of God’s being.
I think that the Holy Spirit, and I say this with great reverence, is the great mothering side of God. She picks us up when we fall down as a good mother does, dusts us off and sets us up on our feet again. She is a nurturing spirit as we find in Genesis. She broods over our lives as She brooded over the waters of creation and brings forth life.
I also see the Earth as our mother. We are at our best when we let the mothering truth of the Godhead, nurture us in how we are to handle the earth. She will lead us into the truth that will set us free so that the earth remains a place for our children’s children and the children of all species for all time.
We must not shoot the messenger; rather we must let the messenger set us free. True freedom is what the gift of the Holy Spirit is for.
Do we want to be free? The Holy Spirit can free us and empower us. But we need first to listen to our mother…
Email List
Stay up to date on upcoming events, sermons, and more!